Gloom Rising (The Book Wielder Saga 1) (26 page)

“What the fuck?” Lewis said, stunned silly.

“I guess they’re our transport,” Winston said, gazing at the creatures.

The Mayor walked up to them. “They’re ready to take you to him. I told them to be careful with you, indeed I did.”

“Okay then...” Lewis said, approaching the nearest one. He hesitantly climbed up the rope ladder and sat on the saddle. He gave a thumbs-up to Winston.

“Be careful my boy,” the Mayor said quietly to Winston.

“Okay, I will,” Winston said as he made his way to the other dragon.

On closer inspection, the dragon looked very old. Some of its scales had fallen off, and ash and dust had collected in-between its good ones, though even those looked worn and scuffed. With slow and careful movements, Winston climbed onto the saddle and placed his hands on the handles. With a joint growl the dragons outstretched their wings and beat them hard until they were off the ground.

The cool wind roared into Winston’s face as the dragons picked up speed, and he had to squint to keep his eyes partially open. Soon Gloom City in all its glum grimy glory was beneath him. It was a city of darkness enclosed by its thick serrated black steel wall. It wasn’t long before they were closing into the hazy purple clouds of the Gloom skyline. Winston braced himself as they penetrated the ceiling of clouds.

The Book Wielders held their breath as the dragons took them higher and higher through the misty purple clouds. They were damp, tingly, and smelled of damp burning wood. Suddenly they immerged into a brightly lit open space, although there seemed to be no source for this new found illumination. The cloud line beneath them now looked fluffy and coloured in shades of white and gold. The sky around and above them was like a twilight sunset. There were fading stars dotted around that struggled to sparkle, and two bright ones that seemed to call out to Winston. But his focus was on the floating castle before him.

It was just like one from his dreams. It was a floating citadel made of expertly cut white and light grey stone blocks, with red tiled roofs on its circular towers and main fortress. It had the same billowing waterfalls that curved back around, defying gravity and flowing upwards back into the structure. Black dragons flew lazy patrols around the skies nearby the structure and some sat peacefully on its ramparts.

The dragons took them into land on a marble platform made of big black and white marble slabs. The dragons craned their long necks around, growled slightly, and nodded at Winston and Lewis. The Book Wielders climbed off and the Dragons flew away to join their kin.

“I guess we’re here until it’s over then,” Lewis said.

“Still confident nothing bad is going to happen?” Winston asked.

“If this Archmage wanted us dead, we’d have been dragon food. Come on, let’s go inside.” Lewis walked off to find an entrance.

“That’s true, I suppose.” Winston joined him.

They walked along small well-kept gardens of brightly coloured lush plant life that neither of the Book Wielders had ever seen before, passed by trees with odd glowing fruit, and spotted strange sparkling butterflies that looked like fairies. The saw the occasional statue of tall, good looking, robed individuals who they assumed were depictions of the ‘super-mages’ of old before they became Demons.

“I think we can get in here,” Lewis said after scouting ahead.

Winston caught up with him and saw that he had found an open stone archway that lead inside the citadel. “Wow, that’s an impressive interior.”

In front of them the inside of the citadel was lavishly decorated with ceiling high bookshelves, floating white light chandeliers, and strange ornaments that were displayed on pedestals or floating in mid-air. Black banners with a white masquerade mask were suspended in the air, and the floor was the black and white chequered marble slabs just like the dragon landing pad.

“It doesn’t exactly scream evil Demon trap, does it?” Lewis said, moving deeper inside.

“No, but it doesn’t seem right somehow,” Winston said, playing with his magical ring. He had felt the artefact was wasted on him until now.

“Come on man, it only feels like that because you’ve never seen a magical castle before!” Lewis said, hurrying towards a big set of dark blue wooden doors.

“And you have?”

“You know what I mean. Cheer up, as far as the Gloom goes this place is a walk in the park,” Lewis said happily. “Remember, if the Archmage wanted us dead he could’ve finished us off dozens of times by now!”

“Oh yeah, that cheers me right up. Thanks Lewis,” Winston said sarcastically.

Lewis pushed on the doors and they opened to reveal a circular room in the heart of the citadel. It had a circular glass or crystal floor and ceiling, and spaced symmetrically around them were more blue doors. Beside them were towering bookshelves filled with books that floated around and filed themselves into different shelves at random. They seemed identical to those that all Book Wielders owned. In a flash of light, the Archmage appeared in the centre of the room.

It was tall and clad in plain white armour. Over the top of that it wore a tight black robe, cut at strange symmetrical angles that left its chest and stomach bare as well as its lower arms and legs. Its head was covered by a black chainmail coif, and had a long plume of black and white hair that fell down to its waist like a ponytail. It had at least three plain white masks on its head, one facing them with a calm expression and two at the sides. It also had plain white masks on each of its chest and shoulder armour plates, and one on the middle of its stomach armour. All the masks seemed to change expression when they weren’t being focused on, apart from the centre face mask which kept its poised dignified expression frozen throughout.

“Welcome,” it said in a pleasant yet distorted tone that was similar to Mortissa’s, but less scary. “Thank you for coming, Winston and Lewis. I know you must have had your reservations about accepting the invitation.”

“No worries,” Lewis said smoothly. “We like your pad, by the way.”

“Why are we here?” Winston asked, getting straight to the point.

“You don’t trust me, Winston? That’s understandable; after all, you’re no fool,” the Archmage began. “But please believe me when I say that I have your best interests at heart.”

Winston hesitated, but the thing seemed sincere enough.

“As you already have guessed, I am the Archmage. My name is Omniosis, and you are here because I need your help to restore the world to its former glory.”

“What former glory?” Lewis asked.

“As Winston deduced a short while ago, we once lived in your world. There were many Archmages back then and we looked more like you,” Omniosis said sadly. “It was magnificent. Magic and wonder were everywhere. The world was like our book and we were the writers. I was part of a conclave that looked after the world, and we were tasked with the governance of both human and Archmage affairs. The world seemed harmonious, but two foul Archmages became jealous of our power and disagreed with our leadership, so they formed their own secret conclave and plotted to overthrow us. We discovered their plan and moved against them. They were no match for my companions and I, and we had almost won the day when they used a spiteful joint spell that ruined us all.”

“They removed you from our world,” Winston concluded.

“And the magic, and even themselves,” Omniosis added. “Their spell was used in the centre of your world, and like a vortex it sucked the magic out of the world. We Archmages, who are dependent on magic for survival, went along with it. A few clung to your world, but starved of sustenance they split into mindless feral beings that would eventually lead to the spawning of the creatures that you know as Vampires, Werewolves, and regular Mages.”

The Archmage waved his armoured hand and the clouds below parted to show a plain barren Isle in the middle of a clear lifeless sea, with a glowing orb of white energy at its centre. The image zoomed in far enough to see little figures plodding around, talking in groups and doing spells.

“We Archmages and the worlds magic was too powerful to be annihilated, so we were pushed here to an empty sub-dimension beneath your world. This was the Gloom when we first found it. The extracted magic created a reflection of reality, and as you can see, it wasn’t so bad then. It was just like a blank canvas for us to paint our world on, as long as we remained near the source of magic that is.”

The image shot forward through time showing the Archmages changing their new isle to their will. Every wonderful type of building imaginable shot forth from the ground or manifested from thin air, skyscrapers to towers, and quaint cottages to enchanted fortresses. The magical Isle grew and grew both outwards and upwards around the sphere of light. But then things started to go darker. It was barely noticeable at first but it was definitely beginning to change.

“We were unaware of the degrading quality of this place. As you can see, the closer things began taking a turn for the worse. Everything we made began degrading so we threw more magic at, but the more we tried fixing our work, the quicker it corrupted. It was an awful cycle.”

The buildings on the image below began deforming and merging together, and the waters around the Isle began turning black. The Archmage zoomed in further to show his people turning mad and having violent fits of rage. Their flesh peeled from their faces, and some were even melding into their corrupted surroundings.

“Some of us realised what was happening; that the closer we were to the source of magic, the greater this worlds degrading qualities were. We tried to get the others to leave but they were too dependent on the magic source to tear themselves from its presence. We made for the twisted reflection of the three continents, but as you have already seen it wasn’t enough to fully negate the effects of this dimension. Both physically and mentally deformed, most of my remaining people you know as Demons. But a small group of others and I came up with a slightly different way to preserve ourselves.”

The Isle below continued to deform. Winston already knew what was coming, for he had seen it with his own eyes. Everything twisted, coiled, melted, and oozed together, both people and buildings alike, until all that was left was a mountain of flesh sitting in an ocean of black water. The Archmage faded the image until it had returned to the gold and white clouds below, and then pointed to the glass above.

“We stole the idea from our enemies,” he continued. “The rebel Archmages retreated from us as soon we all appeared in this world and we weren’t sure where they had gone, until we looked upwards past the clouds.”

The two bright stars amongst the fading ones seemed to burn even brighter as Winston stared up at them. He had the strangest feeling that they were listening to the Archmage too.

“Ever the outsiders, the rebels had removed themselves from the magic as much as they could, disregarding their physical forms and becoming nothing more than the little dots of light you see now. They had lost their power almost completely, but interestingly enough, from what we could discern, their minds remained unchanged. We chose to come halfway; far enough above to remain sane and relatively unchanged, but not so far that we would lose all of our powers.”

“Where are these others that you mentioned?” Winston asked. He had a feeling that he already knew the answer by looking at the amount of masks on the Archmage.

“That brings me to the next part of my story, Winston,” Omniosis replied. “We came up with a plan to return to the real world but we now lacked the power. We merged ourselves into one being to enhance our powers. They became me, and together we are Omniosis.”

“Right...” Lewis said, taking in all of the shocking information. “So what’s this plan to get back to the real world?”

“You and Winston are already part of the first stage,” Omniosis replied in an amused tone.

“We are?” Lewis turned to Winston with a confused look and he shrugged in response.

The Archmage gestured to the library of magical books. “I created the books, of course! I filled them with power and sent them to your world. You see, I have been looking for individuals capable of wielding great power – enough power to help me cross over and bring the magic back to your world with me.”

“But if you can send the books to our world, why do you need us to help you cross over, or any other Book Wielder for that matter?” Lewis asked confused.

“Because he can’t leave the source of magic,” Winston replied. “He’s reliant on it for survival so he needs to come over with the magic, and he doesn’t have the power to do both simultaneously.”

“Very good, Winston,” the Archmage said impressed. “I don’t even have the power to get myself across, let alone force the source of magic over too. Even sending the books was highly taxing. I sent them across hoping to find people like yourselves, people who would be able to take on the mammoth task of restoring the world to its former glory, people who would save me from this gloomy dimensional prison.”

“You need me to make portals,” Winston said.

“Precisely Winston, precisely,” the Archmage said, clapping his hands together. “The quill was the instrument of my race’s downfall in the hands of the two foul witches that brought us here, but in your hands it will be my salvation! But mere portals will not be enough. There is more power in the quill, your books, and yourselves than you realise.”

The Archmage outstretched his hands making Lewis and Winston flinch, but no spell shot from them. Instead, the Book Wielders were shrouded in clouds of energy. They could feel themselves growing in power, their subconscious minds filling with spells and magic beyond their comprehension, and they felt better than they ever had done in their lives before.

“Now your potential has been unlocked. It will take time for your minds to fully grasp the magic and abilities that are now available to you, but your books will assist in the learning process,” Omniosis said cheerfully. “Also, you will no longer feel drained when you come here. You are now a new form of Supernatural, as you would call it; half human and half Archmage, as is the true destiny of the chosen Book Wielders.”